Jonathan Heaton, who became known as “The Father of Alton,” owned the land called Oak Flats and hired Lysander Porter to survey it into nine ten-acre blocks, each divided into four lots for a total of thirty-six two-acre lots, while donating the central block for the town square. The first house in town arrived in the winter of 1907, when James Glover moved his Sink Valley ranch house three miles up the valley to the new town site by placing it on two log runners chained to twenty-four horses, and after ten days of labor in four feet of snow the home reached its lot. Ira Heaton built the first new home in 1908. Alton, named after a Norwegian fjord town with similar severe winters and high altitude, was dedicated by Apostle Francis M. Lyman in the newly completed one room school house on Saturday, September 1, 1908.